


vibing out to you

by arzoensis



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 12:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14260740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arzoensis/pseuds/arzoensis
Summary: Some elders would probably argue that vampires nowadays are too soft. Drinking blood prepared for them by blood banks, whenback in my day, I had to break into a village hut and drink blood in the dead of night.Juuse can kind of see their point, but it's also 2016. Why would anyone spend time hunting for fresh blood when there's Tennessee barbecue to eat?





	vibing out to you

**Author's Note:**

> This is fic where Juuse is a vampire, because I think it's super funny when a young adult is a 4,000 year old vampire and the guy who looks like he's 60 is not.
> 
> I read this over a couple of times, but it's mostly unbetaed, so any errors are my own. It be like that sometimes.
> 
> The title is from French Kiwi Juice's "Vibin' Out With (((O)))," mostly because the whole line is "vibing out with you, it makin’ me too human," which, come on. Of course.

Humans don’t really talk about it much. Juuse can’t say he blames them. They’ve been spreading tales about vampires for hundreds of years. Mostly fake ones, but still. They weren’t exactly expecting a vampire to step out of their apartment and take the train to work.

It’s just that, you know, vampires enjoy modern conveniences, which sometimes require things like identification. And eventually the two digit year printed on your fake isn’t gonna match your face. A group of vampires in D.C. decided to just go ahead and step into the sunlight. Which kind of ruined it for everyone else, but not necessarily in a bad way.

It works out alright for Juuse. He had to tell management in juniors, of course, but they usually let him decide if he wanted to tell anyone. The Preds organization found out after they drafted him and shrugged. Juuse thinks they genuinely forgot about it. Post-revelation it took about a week for the GM to set up a video call and let him know they were working on their vampire-inclusive policy. Which is cool and all, but it doesn’t really bother him that much, to be honest.

 

Juuse wasn’t bored before he decided to start playing. Not really. It’s just that he’s been wandering around for a long time. Three or four thousand years, probably. You can get a lot done in a couple of millenia. He just checked a bunch of things off the mental list he has. Go look at some penguins, check. Become a sailor, check. Become a pirate, check. Walk around underwater for a little while and see if you can find anything interesting, check.

He did his fair share of things that spanned the moral spectrum. Helped rescue orphans, sure, but he also helped a bit in the razing of a kingdom or two. Ruled another one, and wasn’t too bad at it, but a good monarch isn’t _really_ a thing, and your empire has to fall eventually. One time he locked himself in a crypt for a century just to see what would happen. Scared a bunch of archaeologists when he woke up, which was a little funny, but mostly he just felt groggy.

Which is to say that—and this part is important—vampires are practically immortal. Those little totems humans think can protect them, none of them work. Garlic tastes good, sunlight feels nice, silver is pretty. A wooden stake to the heart kinda sucks but if you stabbed anyone they wouldn’t be too happy about it. Really, vampires are just trying to do their own thing. They’ve been coexisting with humans since the first one showed up alongside _Homo sapiens_. But they’re essentially human. With an extended lifespan and lukewarm body temperature and special powers if you’re old enough, but still. Just blood-drinking humans.

 

He was in Finland for about two centuries, zig-zagging his way across the country. Walked there from Thailand. There’s a lot of elders in Scandinavia, mostly because they enjoy the weather and cured fish, for some reason.

His master’s there, just hanging out in his little home just outside of Hämeenlinna. It’s a human word, _master_ , and vampires think it’s misleading and kind of upsetting, to be honest. They’re not big fans of the whole turner-turned hierarchy. Juuse just calls him “buddy” or “old pal” or just his name, “Elias.” He’s still friends with the guy, mostly because he was _super_ apologetic about the whole turning thing. Elias is about a thousand years older, but back then no one told you that drinking more than half of a human’s blood capacity would turn them, and he just had a sip too much. Vampirism was kind of like a shitty gentlemens club back then. They’re better about that now.

Elias takes him to watch a hockey game in the 80s, mostly because he heard that the rink was selling this potato thing and he really wanted to try it. So the two of them sat in the lower bowl, sharing the potato thing and watching HPK. And after that—

Juuse was hooked. He tells Elias he wants to play, and Elias shrugs at him, and that’s that.

 

Sports leagues had to come up with a lot of rules once vampires showed up. Pre-revelation, most vampires just played in places without much oversight or attention; drop-in, beer league, minors, that kind of thing. They got really, _really_ good, but most of them just pretended they were ex-pros. It was easy that way.

The leagues decided it’s only fair that a vampire gets put in the same tier that someone in their age group would play, and that they can stay there as long as an average athlete would. If you were turned young enough that you can be in developmental leagues, you could still get called up the majors. And once you spend as much time as you’re allowed there, you have to wait out a human lifespan until you can join up again. It’s a little cookie cutter, but it works in most cases.

Lots of people kicked up a fuss about the whole special powers thing, but the Venn diagram of vampires who want to play sports and have special powers is a sliver at best. Even then, vampires like Juuse are pretty picky about following the rules. The worst thing you could call a vampire is—well, you could say a lot of offensive things. But, to be absolutely clear, the second-worst thing is a cheater.

No one batted an eye when Juuse joined with his minor team, which was funny but also a little annoying. He did tell them about the whole vampirism thing eventually, but it wasn’t as big of a deal as he thought it might be. It wasn’t like he was overstaying his years.

 

When he joins up with the Predators organization, they do three things: they tell him that no one knows he’s a vampire, so that’s information he can share as he pleases. They have him meet Arvi, a vampire younger than Juuse is. And lastly, they introduce him to the starting goalie, this guy named Pekka. He’s massive, at least half a foot taller. Juuse’s a little miffed about that. Listen, most people weren’t exactly getting their vitamins and minerals when Juuse got turned, and he’s lucky he’s as tall as he is. He’s going to stay just under six feet until he collapses into dust, and that’s just how it’s going to be.

Juuse guesses management put him with Pekka because they’re both “from” Finland, which isn’t _technically_ true, but it’s close enough. He doesn’t really mind, because Pekka’s sweet and funny and really happy to have someone under his wing. He’s one of those guys who genuinely enjoys being a mentor, which Juuse appreciates. He might be 4,000 years old, but he’s only played goalie for a fraction of that time. He has things to learn.

Pekka’s hand is so warm when Juuse shakes it. Juuse thinks that’s the nice part about humans; they’re always so pleasantly warm, like a heated blanket set to the perfect temperature. He could get used to things like that, and he wouldn’t mind if said “things” also included Pekka.

In hindsight, Juuse should’ve pondered those feelings a bit more than he did.

 

Listen, Juuse has to drink blood. If he doesn’t, he’ll just turn into ash eventually. Animal blood is okay; kind of gamy, but it’ll do in a pinch. Human blood tastes like... well, it just tastes _good_.

Juuse’s always felt bad about drinking from humans. It’s a whole mess. If you’re strong like Juuse is you can compel them to let you drink, but that just seems like a shitty thing to do. And honestly not a lot of people would _let_ a vampire drink from them. Which is why the invention of blood banks was incredible. Lots of vampires have deals with their local blood bank to siphon a couple bags off the top in exchange for donations. It works out, since vampires tend to be rather familial, sharing their resources, and a couple have been hanging around since you could get rich lugging bags of pepper across the desert. It’s PR, technically; you’d rather have some upstanding vampire citizens who don’t go around draining people of blood.

The problem is that, like with food, the tastiest blood depends on who’s making it. Which is kind of a gross thing to say, but it’s unfortunately true. Fresh is best, obviously. It’s kind of like the difference between carbonated and flat soda. Some vampires say that teenagers have the best blood, but it’s kind of uncomfortable drinking from people that young (“I’m _really_ sorry,” Elias says, earnestly), so the next best is young adults. And even better than that is blood from people you’re attracted to. Made with love, and all that. And Pekka, well.

Pekka is old, is the thing. Okay, Juuse’s exaggerating. He’s not even middle-aged. But considering the fact that Juuse’s been alive as long as he has, Pekka’s never been in the vicinity of his type in terms of romantic partners. He’s sort of handsome, but mostly in a neighborly way, and if Juuse drank from him he’d probably just taste like sawdust. The thought makes him snicker.

It also makes his fangs itch a little.

He tells Elias as much over the phone, and Elias actually hangs up, calls again, and tells him, “I hate that humans invented smartphones and you can’t flip them shut. But just consider that me flipping my phone shut.”

His whole thing is that Juuse shouldn’t drink from _any_ human if he can help it. There’s a reason why Juuse gets immediate access to a blood bank everywhere he goes. Elias is one of those vampires who would really, really prefer if humans didn’t try to extinguish vampires. It’s hard, but doable, and he likes his very normal life where he gets to go fishing and adopt a new dog as often as he likes. Juuse gets that.

But Elias also says, “Well, I guess he seems like he cares about you, so that’s nice. If he lets you drink from him, I don’t see why you can’t.” Followed shortly by, “I just Googled him. Come on.”

Juuse gets that, too.

 

They spend a lot of time together. It’s a goalie thing, Juuse supposes.

Pekka keeps looking at him, then immediately glancing away with a guilty look on his face. It’s amusing, to be honest. First that Pekka thinks Juuse don’t know that he’s looking, second because Pekka’s face is hilarious. He probably thinks he’s robbing the cradle, or something. There’s no way he could know that Juuse’s a vampire, and it’s not like management would tell him, anyway. Juuse wonders what he would think if he found out the 20-ish year old guy he’s been sneaking peeks at is more than a hundred times his age.

The more that Juuse thinks about it, the more he accepts that Pekka could be someone he’s into. And, in fact, _is_ someone he’s into. Pekka has a great sense of humor, and one decent angle, and he enjoys spending time with and taking care of him. Juuse’s always prided himself on being a bit of an independent person, but having someone bring you glasses of lemonade and gently covering you with a very soft blanket when you doze off watching _Cutthroat Kitchen_ is pleasant.

Pekka’s also absolutely vicious when he’s in the crease. Juuse’s pretty sure he’s learned more watching Pekka play than he has with his years of coaching. How to be aggressive, but calm at the same time. Juuse could probably watch him play forever.

And isn’t that a funny word to use?

 

Juuse moves in with Pekka with his first official call-up. Pekka has a huge, spacious house with far too many bedrooms for a single man. It’s great for parties, though. Juuse gets his own bedroom with an _en suite_ bathroom. Juuse flops headfirst into the bed, and just lies there for half an hour. It’s really, really nice.

He’s a couple months into his first partial season with the Preds when he honestly considers telling Pekka. There aren’t really pros and cons: either he’s cool with it or he isn’t. In a worst case scenario, Juuse can just move out and get his own place to live. It’s not like he isn’t squatting on his own fortune. Selling doubloons with his own face minted on them to private collectors is probably a _little_ sketchy, but hey—they gotta go somewhere.

The problem here is that Juuse has genuinely come to enjoy Pekka’s company. He’s a quiet, relaxed guy. He likes going out on hikes, and drags Juuse with him. He reads books on the back porch, with a sweating glass of iced tea balanced on the arm of the deck chair. He watches cooking shows in his free time and carefully writes down recipes he wants to try in a black notebook. He expects Juuse to help him cook, too, as payment for living in his house rent-free. Juuse doesn’t need to eat food, but sitting down with him three times a day and just chatting about everything has been... nice. And anyways, he can appreciate a good carbonara.

“I’m a vampire,” Juuse says. Better to rip off the bandaid.

“That’s cool,” Pekka replies. He’s clearly not paying attention, too engrossed in the current chapter of his book. “I’m glad you’ve discovered yourself.”

Juuse sighs. He quirks his head, narrows his eyes a little. Pekka immediately stands up, jerkily turns his body until he’s facing Juuse, the book tumbling to the floor.

“I’m a vampire,” Juuse repeats. He releases Pekka, who slumps back into the chair. “I’m sorry I had to compel you. I figured it was the easiest way to get it through to you.”

“Um,” Pekka says.

 

For what it’s worth, Pekka takes it very, very well. Even after the compelling.

“I guess I had my suspicions,” Pekka says. “I mean, I know vampires aren’t weak to all the things we say you are, but you _would_ spend a lot of time slathering yourself with sunscreen.”

“That’s just called skincare,” Juuse replies. Pekka snorts. “The real giveaway was that I slept, like, two hours a night. I don’t need sleep, but I can—I guess it’s dozing? It’s not really refreshing or anything. I get bored after a while, though.”

“Is that why you learned to make breakfast?” Pekka asks, and Juuse laughs.

“Well, you made those waffles the other day and I was really craving them,” he confesses. “But then it took me so long that I ended up pretending I woke up early to make us food, and then I just kept doing it. It made you happy.”

Pekka grins at him, and if Juuse had a heartbeat it would probably be picking up right now.

“Are there other vampires in the league?” Pekka asks, eventually.

“Sure, but we don’t tell humans about each other, if you’re asking. It’s a little rude,” Juuse says. He tilts his head. “If you wanna take a guess, I’ll say yes or no.”

“Jagr,” Pekka says, immediate.

“I thought so too, but no.” Juuse shrugs. “Just a regular, really old guy.”

“Huh,” Pekka says, thoughtful. He shakes off the arugula of excess water, puts it in a bowl. “Anyone else here?”

“Not how this works.” Juuse flicks a wadded-up straw wrapper across the counter, bouncing it off of Pekka’s arm. He absently swipes it into the trash can. Juuse doesn’t know why that’s as endearing as it is. “But sure, there’s one.”

“You won’t tell me?” Pekka asks, amused.

“Not Josi,” Juuse offers.

“That’s the only person I could think of, to be honest,” Pekka says. “I dunno. Just seems like the vampiric type.”

Juuse shrugs. “I guess you’ll never know, then.”

“Hm. I can be okay with that,” Pekka replies, half to himself. He glances at Juuse and smiles. “If they’re like you, then there’s no problem.”

Juuse rolls his eyes, but he also wants to turn into a pile of dust right then and there.

“I always thought vampires would be like the ones in the films,” Pekka says, thoughtfully. He pulls out the loaf of sourdough, saws off four slices. “You know, tall and imposing. What happened to you?”

“I’m almost four thousand years old,” Juuse says, grumpy. “I’m older than most vampires on this earth. I don’t need to be tall when I’m strong enough that most vampires won’t get within ten feet of me.”

“That’s nice,” Pekka says. “So do you want tomatoes in your sandwich or not?”

There’s a long pause. “No,” Juuse says, finally. “I don’t like how they taste.”

 

Humans always want to see the fangs. Well, the first thing they usually want to see is the bat form. Juuse cannot turn into a bat. He can sort of morph his _face_ into a bat, but Elias says it’s upsetting so Juuse hasn’t done it in about a millenia.

“You do have fangs, though, right?” Pekka asks, after the disappointing knowledge that there is no bat form. They’re in Pekka’s hotel room after a win, the kind that sort of makes Juuse feel itchy under his skin. Most of the time he’d wander around the city in the dark, trekking a couple of miles to work out the excess energy.

Tonight, Pekka’s made him stay indoors, said something about not wanting him to get mugged. Juuse bristles a little at that. He’s not a human, capable of having harm done to him. Which, when Juuse thinks it, is an incredibly smug thing to say, but it’s honestly true. He has a lot of ways of stopping humans from doing things.

“Mm,” Juuse mumbles. “I keep them retracted most of the time.”

“Can I see them?” Pekka asks.

Juuse looks at him, and Pekka’s face is so _earnest_. Like he genuinely just wants to know. He sighs, licks over his canines. Juuse has never been one for parading around his vampiric qualities, but. For Pekka.

He opens his mouth, carefully extends his fangs. He hasn’t had them out in so long; there’s no reason for it, not when he hasn’t hunted in a century. It feels good to have them slip past his gums. Like he’s really himself again.

Pekka reaches out, and Juuse doesn’t flinch exactly, but he does tilt his head backwards.

“Don’t touch them,” Juuse says. “I don’t want to prick you.”

“I won’t,” Pekka says, carefully tilting Juuse’s face back and forth. He’s so close. Juuse can feel the heat radiating off of him. “Does it feel different to have them out? Bad, or anything?”

Juuse shakes his head slightly. “It feels normal. Better than normal, I think? Like when you take off something really constricting.”

When Pekka’s finally done with his inspection, he moves his hand. “Thanks for showing them to me,” he says, but he doesn’t step away.

Juuse retracts his fangs, keeps his mouth open to show Pekka before he presses his lips together, a determined line. He looks up at him, like a dare. Just waiting.

Pekka leans in and kisses him. Juuse curls a hand around his hip, pulls him a step closer. Pekka’s so much taller, wider. Still so warm, with a hand on Juuse’s cheek angling him up.

Juuse’s been on the Earth for a long, long time. Pekka is not his first, and not even his dozenth human. It shouldn’t be as overwhelming as it is, being here with him. The fact that it is—Juuse doesn’t know what to think.

Pekka kisses his cheek, pulls away ever so slightly, their bodies separated by centimeters.

“Hi,” he murmurs, and Juuse looks up at him. “You’re not as cold as I thought you might be.”

“You should feel me in Winnipeg,” Juuse says, and when Pekka laughs, he can’t look away.

 

Dating Pekka is not the worst thing he could be doing, Juuse supposes. They still do everything they used to do: cook together, go on hikes, that kind of thing. Except they also get to have sex, which is great.

Juuse moves all his stuff into the master bedroom. At night, Juuse watches the rise and fall of Pekka’s chest, the way that he shifts and turns in his sleep. Humans are so fragile, he thinks. Leaving themselves unconscious for hours every day. He puts a hand over Pekka’s heart, feels it thump under his palm.

Their teammates are happy for them, although they spend a lot of time ribbing Juuse for dating beneath him, and Pekka for stealing Juuse as soon as he came out of the farm team. Arvi’s very amused by the whole thing when he finds out.

“People are going to ask questions,” he says. “What’s a thirty-five year old doing with a guy a hundred times his age?”

Well, if Pekka has a problem with who— _what_ —he is, it may be too late now. Juuse’s more attached than he’s been in a long while. With Pekka’s hand in his, he doesn’t see a reason not to be.

 

“What’s it like to drink blood?” Pekka asks one night, when the two of them are in bed together.

Juuse was expecting the question, really. Humans always get curious. It _is_ a very fascinating subject for everyone, if he’s honest. A couple vampires have, like, blogs where they write long reviews about blood tastes. Juuse wouldn’t go that far. He just does what he needs to do to keep on keeping on. He’s almost forgotten what fresh, human blood tastes like. Almost.

“It’s... necessary,” Juuse says, carefully. “Most of the time, it feels the same way as when you eat a meal. You have to do it, but you can enjoy it.”

Pekka hums. “Do you drink from humans?”

“I haven’t had fresh blood in a long time,” Juuse says with a shrug. “The guy who turned me—you would call him my master, but he’s sort of like my dad—taught me not to drink fresh blood if I could help it.”

“But you do, eventually, need to drink blood,” Pekka says. “It just doesn’t really matter how you get it.”

“I drink blood bags. I try to do it discreetly, because it’s kind of off-putting to people. You know, just sticking a straw into a blood bag and drinking it like it’s a juice box.” Juuse says. “The training staff provides them when I need them. It’s kind of like the difference between having homemade and boxed mac and cheese. KD is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but every time you eat homemade mac and cheese you realize the stuff in the box is pretty awful.”

Pekka laughs softly. “So you haven’t had fresh blood in a while?”

“Not since they invented the blood bank. Before that I would usually drink from animals, sometimes from humans. It’s not a big deal. The difference is pretty minor, all things considered.

“Some vampires like to drink when their partner is—you know.” Pekka quirks an eyebrow. Juuse can see it, even in the dark. He sighs. “When they’re aroused.”

“Ah.”

“It tastes different,” Juuse says. “Feels different, too. Kind of like a high. It’s not a one-way street, though. Our saliva has chemicals in it that make humans more susceptible to, um, feeling good, I guess.”

There’s a long pause while Juuse listens to Pekka breathe. It’s very calming. It can almost distract him from what he knows Pekka will ask next. “Hypothetically, if you were going to drink from me, where would you bite?”

“Not your neck. My saliva speeds up your healing process so the bleeding stops once I’m done drinking, but the punctures take about a day to heal. Most vampires like the upper arm, like you’re drawing blood.”

Pekka hums again, his thumb stroking along the line of Juuse’s hip. “So it’s not too bad.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to let me drink from you,” Juuse says, quiet. “For me, it’s something you offer. Drinking from humans, from you—it’s not really about sustenance. It’s about trust and respect.”

“I’m offering,” Pekka says. Juuse doesn’t even breathe and it feels like the wind has been knocked out of him.

“You have to be completely serious,” Juuse says. He’s not sure how to get Pekka to understand the sheer significance of what he’s allowing him to do. “When I tell you I haven’t drank from a person in a century, I’m completely serious, too. I would never turn you or drain you without your permission. But it can be a very overwhelming experience for everyone involved.”

“I trust you,” Pekka says. Immediately, and simply. “Now?”

Juuse blinks at him. “You want me to drink from you now?”

Pekka shrugs. “We have time.”

Juuse huffs out a breath of laughter. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay.”

He has Pekka sit up against the headboard, with his arms lying loosely at his sides. It’s easier like this, when Juuse can sit next to him on the bed, keep Pekka’s arm in a careful hold.

He noses along the vein in the upper arm. Median cubital. Close to the surface, where it’s easy to reach. Becomes more visible when pressure is applied. The smell of it up close is enough to make Juuse shiver.

“I’m going to bite,” Juuse says. He licks at his canines, lets them extend as far as they can. “It won’t hurt much. A pinch. And just a mouthful.”

Pekka nods at him.

Juuse kisses over the vein before he bites down, his fangs poking through the skin. Pekka tenses briefly, relaxes as soon as Juuse uses his tongue to push saliva against the opening. He sucks on the wound gently, the blood filling his mouth. He swallows once, twice; savors the sweet, heady taste of it before he licks the wound again, closing it up.

“That’s it,” Juuse says, lifting his head from Pekka’s arm. He licks his lips. It feels like his head is swimming, like an engine in his stomach has suddenly purred to life. He’s getting goosebumps all along his arms, the back of his neck. He isn’t going to say he missed this but, yeah, he really did miss this.

“Oh,” Pekka says. Juuse can see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. “That’s... a really interesting feeling.”

“Yeah, humans tend to find it pretty enjoyable.” He curls up against Pekka’s side, wraps an arm around his waist. “I’ve had it explained to me before. I imagine it’s about the same as I feel.”

“Enjoyable is kind of an understatement. Holy shit,” Pekka says, his voice full of wonder.

Juuse laughs, kisses Pekka on the cheek. He hums and rests his head against Pekka’s shoulder. Listens to his heartbeat as it thrums through his neck, his entire body. A perfect sound.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I absolutely had _What We Do in the Shadows_ in mind when I wrote this, how did you know
> 
> You can come chat with me at [my tumblr](https://arzoensis.tumblr.com) if you'd like!


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